Mile 22

DIRECTOR: peter berg (deepwater horizon, patriots day, lone survivor)
STARRING: mark wahlberg, iko uwais, ronda rousey, and john malkovich

REVIEWER: lyall carter

★★★

CIA operative James Silva leads a small but lethal paramilitary team on an urgent and dangerous mission. They must transport a foreign intelligence asset from an American embassy in Southeast Asia to an airfield for extraction - a distance of 22 miles. Silva and the soldiers soon find themselves in a race against time as the city's military, police and street gangs close in to reclaim the asset.

Director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg have made three previous films together with Lone Survivor being the standout. Even though Mile 22 is packed to the rafters with action with Wahlberg at his scrappy best, Mile 22 is the less impressive of the Berg/Wahlberg collaborations.

James Silva (Wahlberg) and his highly trained paramilitary team must transport a double agent twenty two miles from an embassy in Southeast Asia to an airfield for extraction to the USA. Once safe the double agent will give the team a code to crack a programme that will give the location of a highly toxic substance that could be used to destroy thousands.

Now Berg and Wahlberg know how to create an action spectacle and Mile 22 does not disappoint on this front. The action sequences are frenetic, bloody, and extremely violent with everything within reach used as a weapon.

But the story is fractured and poorly paced, with twists and turns in the plot that either don't make sense or don't illicit any surprise from the audience as they don't really make much sense. For such a high stakes scenario it doesn't really feel that way either. I guess not having a real likeable character or any emotional investment in the ensemble just adds to that sense of blandness.

Filled with action but with a messy plot, Mile 22 isn't Wahlberg's best action outing.